Airplanes; the life story of a technology. (reprint, 2006).

9780801890697

Airplanes; the life story of a technology. (reprint, 2006)

Kinney, Jeremy R.

Johns Hopkins U. Press

2008

160 pages

$19.95

Paperback

TL515

This is a paperbound reprint of a 2006 book. The Wrights called it a "flyer," not an "airplane." Wiley Post's luck ran out in 1935, but first he wore the world's first pressure suit at about 50,000 feet. The first American turboprop airliner debuted in 1958, but dragged six years after the British. Kinney, curator of the Aeronautics Division at the National Air and Space Museum, covers the efforts of everyone from a hapless flying monk in Malmesbury in the 1100s, Newton (lift and drag), Smeaton (cambered wings) and the remarkable Cayley who had most of it figured out in the first half of the nineteenth century. He is careful to keep his narrative accessible to general readers and includes a manageable glossary and list of related reading. He rightly devotes substantial space to the contributions of military and commercial flight but also describes general aviation and the more recent advances in going higher, faster and farther.

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